Plastic bags have been replacing paper bags in the United States since the 1970s for the grocery and retail product industries due to superior and inherent moisture resistant properties and strength of plastic, among other things. For these industries, these plastic bags usually are of the T-shirt type which include front and rear wall sections integrally connected by gussetted side walls and connected at the bottom to define a closed bottom on the bag. At least a part of the front and rear wall sections are open at the tops to define a mouth portion. Laterally spaced handles, integral with the front, rear and gussetted side wall sections, extend upwardly from opposed sides of the mouth portion and include mounting apertures of a predetermined length formed through the handles.
These types of bags for the grocery and retail product industries have been marketed by the assignee of the present invention as the highly commercially successful QUIKMATE.RTM. bagging system, described in U.S. Pat. No. Re. 33,264, reissued Jul. 17, 1990. This system includes a plurality of such T-shirt bags formed into a bag pack and mounted on horizontally-extending support arms of the rack through the mounting apertures in the handles of the bag for being opened and loaded one-at-a-time and removed from the rack after being loaded.
The traditional grocery bag rack utilized with the above described system and with most other systems is designed to be self-supporting for sitting on top of a grocery counter check-out or other check-out counters and has evolved generally to the constructions shown in later issued U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,335,788 and 5,362,152, which are assigned to the assignee of the present invention. These prior rack constructions usually include a base portion designed to sit on a check-out counter or the like to render the racks self-supporting and the support arms are of a sufficient length so that the bags can be consecutively opened-up along the length of the support arms and loaded prior to removal from the support arms. The support arms are also spaced-apart a sufficient distance to maximize the mouth opening of the bag and generally position the bag handles at outwardly extending angles from the bag mouth. These prior rack constructions present problems in retail and convenience stores where space is a premium due to large items being checked-out or where there is not sufficient room for a bag rack system of this type. In these situations, it would be desirable to have a bag rack which could be mounted on a vertical wall, such as the inside of the check-out counter or the like, and which would be able to hold a bag pack for removal of these T-shirt bags one-at-a-time.
In light of the above problem, some rack manufacturers have recently put out a small rack, as shown in FIG. 1 hereof and labeled "Prior Art". This prior art rack construction, indicated at 110, includes a frame member 111 adapted to be attached to a vertical wall by screws or the like and has two short support arms 120 extending outwardly therefrom with looped outer end portions 122 for receiving and holding the handles H of a plurality of bags B forming a bag pack P through mounting apertures A in the bag handles H and which includes a central hook 113 for holding a central tab T of each of the bags B in the pack P. This rack 110 was adapted to be used by opening-up and removing the bags consecutively from the bag pack. When opening up of the bag, the handle portions attached to the front wall of the bag were removed from the rack support arms and the bag hung open on the rack from the handle portions attached to the rear wall of the bag for loading by the user and subsequently being removed entirely from the rack.
While this recently introduced prior art rack construction 110 helped with the space problems presented with earlier prior art racks where space was a premium at the check-out counter or the like, it presented other problems in that the bag handles of the bag pack tend to slide off the rack arms when the bag is opened-up and is being loaded by a user. This is caused because the looped outer end portions 122 of each rack support arm 120 is constructed to be of a width W generally equal to the length L of mounting apertures A in the handles of the bags B to allow mounting of the bag packs P on the rack 110. It should be understood that the width of the support arm W and the length L of the aperture A in the handles of the bag B are considered in a two dimensional sense as shown in the drawings and correspond, respectively, to the equivalent distance around the perimeter of the support arm and the mounting aperture of the bag handles.